Dreams Adrift (A River Dream Novel) (5 page)

A short time later Dwayne Stevens and his wife
Joan were climbing aboard from their dinghy. They were fellow
Americans taking a holiday cruise from Cartegena to
Gibraltar.

“
We always take these two weeks
and charter a boat somewhere far from home,” Dwayne told
us.

The Stevens were from Gilford, New Hampshire,
where they owned a house on Lake Winnipesaukee.

“
Last year we sailed from
Barcelona to Cartegena. The year before that was the Toulon to
Barcelona leg. We've been working our way along the northern
Mediterranean.”

It didn't take much encouragement to get them
to join us for a late dinner. Afterward we sat in the salon and
learned a bit more about them.

“
We should really be back in New
Hampshire this time of year. These two weeks are among the busiest
of the year for our restaurant,” Joan told us.

“
Yeah,” Dwayne said, “but we leave
it in the capable hands of our son and his wife. Along with our
partner Troy, they really run the place these days.”

“
What type of restaurant is it?” I
asked, wondering if it was a fast-food type place or something
fancy.

Joan took a sip of her tea, and replied, “It's
a full-service family restaurant. We also have a few rooms upstairs
that we rent out, sort of an inn.”

Maeve smiled as she offered to refill Joan's
cup. “It sounds like a bed-and-breakfast.”

Joan held her cup out to let Maeve top it off
and shook her head.

“
Not really; we don't actually
serve breakfast.” She laughed. “But you can sleep in late and come
down for lunch.”

While the ladies talked about the restaurant,
Dwayne and I talked about sailing.

“
Lake Winnipesaukee is a
good-sized body of water, isn't it?” I asked Dwayne.

He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s twenty miles
from Moultonborough to Alton Bay and five miles or more wide,
depending on how you measure.”

“
How long is the sailing season?”
I asked, wondering what it would be like to sail that lake. I
imagined it would be a lot like the time Hans and I visited his
grandmother and went sailing on Lake Geneva.

“
Ice out usually occurs about the
third week of April,” Dwayne explained, “but it's usually another
couple of weeks before I put the boat back in the
water.”

He noticed the puzzled look on my face when he
said ice out.

“
Ice out is declared when there is
enough open water for the Mount Washington to make all its
ports.”

I’d heard of the Motor Vessel Mount
Washington. It made regular rounds of the lake during the late
spring, summer, and early fall. My mother, who was from
southwestern New Hampshire, had visited Lake Winnipesaukee and
cruised aboard the M/V Mount Washington.

The vessel was named for the real Mount
Washington, the highest mountain in New England, and the location
of the highest wind speed ever recorded. When I was a kid we’d
visited it once or twice, but I hadn't been in a long
time.

“
You and Maeve should come up and
visit some time,” Dwayne suggested. “I'll take you out sailing on
the lake. You'll love it.”

As it was getting late, he suggested this as
they were preparing to row back to their boat.

“
We will definitely plan on it,” I
promised as I helped Joan down into their dinghy.

We didn't see them the next morning as they
rose with the sun and headed west. We did hear them, though, as
they weighed anchor and hoisted their sails.

“
They were a nice couple,” Maeve
noted. “I hope we'll still be traveling the world to go sailing
when we're that age.”

“
As long as we can, we will,” I
assured her.

We spent a couple of days seeing the sites
around Almunecar before continuing our voyage. We spent another
month sailing east along the Spanish coast, finally arriving in
Valencia. There we turned in our trusty vessel and rested for a few
days before boarding the first of the several flights it would take
to get us home.

Five

We arrived in Raleigh and spent another night
in the Hilton before loading up on the Cessna and flying back to
Wilmington. Since we had a couple of weeks before Maeve started
teaching at Laney and I started classes at UNCW, we decided to
spend them at River Dream.

Before we could do that, though, we had to
visit her folks and my folks and tell them all about our trip.
Malori was especially interested in hearing all about our
adventures. After a lasagna dinner at Mom and Dad's, she bombarded
us with questions.

“
Did you have to speak Spanish the
whole time?” she wanted to know.

“
I don’t know that we had to,”
Maeve told her, “but since both of us are pretty good at it, we
usually did.”

“
After a day ashore doing the
tourist thing,” I added, “we’d catch ourselves talking in Spanish
to each other on the boat without thinking about it.”

Malori laughed. “That sounds kind of cool. If
you go to France next time, are you going to learn French
first?”

“
Je parle francais, un peur,” I
replied. “I already know a little from high school. With a few
lessons, I think we could manage.”

Malori was most interested in the horseback
riding.

“
You rode western-style American
saddles in the middle of Spain?” she asked
incredulously.

“
The whole place was styled after
a South Dakota dude ranch,” Maeve told her.

As the discussion became more about horses, I
tuned out. When Maeve and Malori started talking horses, they
entered a zone all their own. The two of them, it turned out, had
found common ground.

Malori’s interest in riding had blossomed
while I was away in the Navy. Most days she'd much rather ride than
go sailing, which was close to blasphemy in my book.

My ears perked up when I heard Malori say,
“Why don’t you come riding with me next weekend?”

Maeve looked at me.

I shrugged and said, “Sure. It’ll mean staying
in town, but we’ve got nothing planned that I know of.”

Maeve smiled at Malori. “Then I’d love
to.”

“
Great,” Malori said. “You can
ride Darling.”

Darling, a chestnut brown Morgan mare with
such a gentle disposition the owner of the stable often borrowed
her to give younger kids their first ride, was the older of
Malori’s two horses. She’d been Malori’s first horse.

“
And you’ll get to meet Debonaire,
my quarter horse,” Malori continued. “He’s a gelding, but he’s
still got lots of spirit.”

The next evening found us in Whiteville dining
with the Daltons. Much to our surprise, our trip wasn't the big
news of the night.

After dinner, when we were all seated in the
living room, Cynthia requested the floor.

“
I know this will come as a shock,
since you didn't know I was seeing anyone, but I'm getting
married.”

We all looked at her in stunned silence for a
moment. Finally Maeve found her voice.

“
Wow, that's a surprise;
congratulations, Cynthia. Who's the lucky guy?”

“
Yes, dear,” Phyllis managed to
say. “Who is this fellow you've been keeping a secret from us
all?”

Ted stood up, his face twisted into a puzzled
frown, and sat down again.

Cynthia's gaze traveled over each of us before
she replied. “His name is Andrew Crispman. He's a major in the
Army. I met him last month when he transferred in. It was love at
first sight.”

Ted's mouth was set firmly as he nodded while
Cynthia talked.

“
When will we get to meet this
major?” he asked tersely when Cynthia paused.

His tone caused Cynthia to react as though
he'd struck her. Maeve and Phyllis both seemed surprised by the
harshness in his voice. I felt it best if I kept a low
profile.

“
Well, I'm sorry,” Ted continued.
“We didn't even know she was seeing anyone. She's known the guy
barely a month, and already she's talking about getting
married.”

“
Maeve and Michael hardly knew
each other longer than that when they got married,” Cynthia
retorted.

Her hand flew to her mouth as if trying to
stop the words that already escaped. She turned to Maeve to
apologize, but she was too late.

“
If you'll recall, big sister,
Michael and I had known each other for years before the time was
right for us to get together. It was hardly a whirlwind
romance.”

It hurt me to see the tears forming in Maeve's
eyes. I reached out and put my arm around her. The look on
Cynthia's face could only be described as panic.

“
I didn't mean it, Maeve. I'm so
sorry.”

She stepped toward Maeve, but Maeve turned her
head into my shoulder to hide her tears.

At last Phyllis spoke. “I think maybe we all
need to calm down here. Cynthia has presented us with what I think
is happy news. Ted, I'm ashamed of you, reacting that way. After
all, you asked me to get married little more than a month after we
met.”

She said this last with a coy smile and eyes
that dared him to contradict her.

Ted drew a deep breath and slowly let it out,
his lips pressed into a thin line. His head swiveled as his eyes
bore first into his wife, and then into Cynthia. It must have been
the heartbroken look on Cynthia’s face that penetrated his anger
and made him realize what his reaction was doing to her.

“
I'm sorry that I’m not overjoyed
by your news, sweetheart. It comes a quite a shock.”

He turned to Phyllis, and said, “We haven’t
even met this guy. She hardly even knows this guy. How can you
blame me for reacting like an overprotective father when she
springs something like this on us out of the blue?”

Cynthia, straining to keep her voice steady,
said, “Daddy, when you meet him, I just know you’ll like him.
Andrew is a very special man and I really do love him. Daddy, you
know me. I wouldn’t even think of marrying him if I wasn’t
absolutely sure.”

Clasping his hands under his chin, Ted looked
into Cynthia’s eyes and saw the tears there, threatening to
fall.

“
You’ve never given me a reason to
doubt your judgment before, Cynthia. I suppose I should at least
meet your young man before I decide he’s not good enough for my
daughter.” His lips turned up in a weak smile. “Okay?”

Cynthia nodded her head and blinked back her
tears. “Okay, Dad. Yeah, that’ll be okay.”

Turning away from her father, Cynthia asked
Maeve, “How about us? Are we okay?”

Maeve sniffed, wiped away a tear, and then
smiled a genuine smile. “Yeah, we're okay.”

Phyllis heaved a big sigh of relief. A family
disaster had been averted.

Cynthia then went on to explain, “Andrew was
going to come tonight to meet everyone, but duty called and he had
to work. I wanted it to be a surprise. That was foolish, I
guess.”

Feeling it might be safe, I spoke up. “It
worked. Everyone was sure surprised.”

Cynthia stuck her tongue out at me, and we all
laughed.

Phyllis announced it was time for dessert.
She’d baked a German chocolate cake, which was quite rich and
tasty. Following dessert, Maeve and I entertained them with stories
of our voyage. It was well after midnight when we finally returned
to our house on Wrightsville Beach.

Six

Though I’d learned horseback riding as a kid,
I never fell in love with the sport the way Malori and, as I was
coming to discover, Maeve did. Since I had no interest in hanging
around the stables while the two of them were horsing around, I
convinced my father that we should take his new boat out fishing.
Dad explained why he’d bought the boat he did as he showed me
around his Grady-White 255 Sailfish with its twin 140-horsepower
Johnson motors.

“
When I decided it was time for a
new boat, I looked at what there was out there and remembered what
you told me about Derrick's dad's boat. When I saw the Sailfish, I
knew it was just what I was looking for.”

We cast off and headed offshore. A couple of
hours cruising later and we were at the wreck of the
Cassimir
, a 400-foot tanker built just after World War I.
The
Cassimir
sank in a collision with the SS
Lara
in
1942 while carrying molasses from Cuba to Baltimore. The wreck was
a popular fishing and diving site. My father and I had fished there
often when I was a kid.

We spent the day trying different spots around
the wreck. The fish were pretty lazy, and we didn't catch many.
Those we did we released anyway. Giving the fish a break at
mid-day, we enjoyed the picnic lunch my mom packed for us. Around
mid-afternoon we decided to head back, arriving just in time for
dinner.

Maeve was waiting for us on the dock as we
pulled up. Actually, she and Malori were sitting in the cockpit of
Hey 19
, my first sailboat. She was a nineteen-foot
West-White Potter.